A former Garden Grove police sergeant who once led the department's officers' union was dragged out of his Eastvale home before dawn Thursday and booked on four felony charges accusing him of sexually assaulting two women who worked for the department, one of them a fellow officer. Charles “Chuck” William Starnes III, 52, is now being held in Orange County Jail on $5 million bail.
The Orange County District Attorney's Office announced the charges, which include kidnapping to commit a sex offense, two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object, and assault with intent to commit a sexual offense, according to the Orange County Register. The charges were filed Oct. 16 but weren't unsealed until Friday, and Starnes was taken into custody around 4:15 a.m. Thursday by a U.S. Marshals Service task force, per the same report.
Prosecutors say the first alleged assault dates back to March 2007, when Starnes allegedly attacked a fellow Garden Grove officer as she exited the women's restroom at a bar in Stanton. He then dragged her into the parking lot and continued the assault until two other officers intervened and stopped him, according to the Register's account of prosecutors' allegations.
A Second Alleged Assault, 13 Years Later
The second case accuses Starnes of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a female civilian employee of the Garden Grove Police Department during a car ride back from a celebration at a Long Beach bar marking the completion of a police officer's probationary period, in March 2020. The newspaper's report notes the alleged attack occurred while the two were being driven away from that gathering.
One of the two sexual penetration counts involves alleged force, while the other involves an intoxicating or controlled substance, per the Register's reporting on the charges. If convicted on all counts, Starnes faces a maximum sentence of seven years to life in prison plus an additional 14 years, the paper reports.
A Career That Began in Riverside County
Starnes previously worked as a deputy with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department before joining the Garden Grove Police Department in 2005. He went on to serve as president of the Garden Grove Police Officers' Association, and in 2025 he was assigned as a sergeant to the department's Traffic Operations Unit.
His departure from the force has been described two different ways in reporting. One account states Starnes retired in April 2026 while still under investigation over sexual harassment allegations, while another account places his retirement from the Traffic Operations Unit in May 2026 — a discrepancy the available reporting does not resolve.
A Separate Civil Lawsuit Over Harassment
Starnes's criminal case arrives just over a week after a civilian Garden Grove Police Department employee filed a lawsuit alleging she was subjected to “severe and pervasive sexual harassment,” according to the Register. The suit claims Starnes, who was her direct supervisor in the department's traffic division, harassed her from July 2025 into early 2026.
That civil complaint was filed Oct. 19 in Orange County Superior Court, and the Mercury News reports it is unrelated to the criminal case now pending against him. As first reported by NBC Los Angeles, the charges mark a dramatic fall for a man who spent two decades rising through the ranks of a department whose officers he once represented as union president.
